Are the high prices charged by prostitutes becoming a drag on your budget? The Nashville Police have good news for you! Sign up now to be an informant, and your next visit to the manor of Madam Mitigation can be not only free, but a source of income:

Metro police spent almost $120,000 over a three-year period to foster encounters, mostly skin-on-skin, between confidential informants and prostitutes in an effort to further Nashville's crackdown on the illicit sex trade.

Confidential informants pocketed more than $70,000 of that, with the rest going to providers of sexual services, according to police records from 2002 to 2004.

The Police Department stands behind the controversial practice of paying informants to touch and be touched — and sometimes go further — while gathering evidence of prostitution....

I imagine that the $50,000 paid to providers of sexual services came in handy in paying the legal fees to fight the eventual charges.